Darth wish

Hayden Christensen is the real deal - handy with a light sabre, yet determined that, post- Revenge of the Sith, he won't always look on the Darth side of life, writes Jim Schembri.

With his legs locked in rigid A-frame attack mode, Hayden Christensen is making clear a few of the finer points on the operation of a light sabre. In a blur, he twirls the humming weapon in front of him - swoop, swing, uppercut, slash. He's using both hands, and there's a sound reason for that.

''You can do more with two hands, use more of your body weight, get behind your strikes. If you use one hand, however," he says, switching tactics, "you've got more movement, more ability. So you can do more lateral moves, more flashy stuff." Slash, strike, twirl.

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Impressive. Most impressive.

Is it better to slice or to stab?

'"Better to slice, because then you can continue into your next move more fluidly." He demonstrates by slicing the coffee table in two.

"If you stab, then you have to have a stop movement and you have to pull back out. With a slice movement you can continue that momentum into the next one."

He demonstrates, twirling around, slashing through the plush sofa and bringing the tip of the light sabre dangerously close to the reporter's neck.

A key question, now: Does a light sabre automatically cauterise when carving through live flesh?

"Yes it does," Christensen says, without missing a beat. "It hasto."

Of course it does. You can't have Star Wars films filled with fountains of blood spurting from severed limbs as if paying homage to Sam Peckinpah.

The demonstration over, Christensen powers down his light sabre and puts it safely away. Mastering it took two months of training before filming Episode II: Attack of the Clones, he explains, but the intensity of the many duels in Episode III: Revenge of the Sith required another three months' hard work.

And now it's all over. At home he'll take the light sabre out every now and again and "give it a good twirl", but his days of Darth are but sweet memories for an actor who is determined not to go down the Mark Hamill route and be forever remembered only for his part in George Lucas' vision of intergalactic conflict.

Christensen was born in 1981, a year after the second Star Wars film, The Empire Strikes Back, was released. How deep the Star Wars folklore goes is made evident to him when the reporter shows him the 10-year-old potato chip packet Tazo he keeps in his wallet, and the tiny Y-wing fighter he carries around with him like a crucifix.

''This just goes to reinforce the massive impact that Star Wars has had on popular culture," Christensen says, gingerly examining the items.

"It's mindblowing how many people these films have affected in such a profound way. It's amazing. I'll go in to meet with a director and they'll say, 'Star Wars was why I wanted to make movies. The first time the lights came down and that scroll came up I was hooked'.

''Before I'd even seen the films, when I was a little kid with no concept of the Star Wars story, I would imitate Darth Vader's voice to scare my little sister, so that says a lot."

Carrying the impersonation through to its logical conclusion, Christensen takes his performance as Anakin Skywalker all the way to the Dark Side in Revenge of the Sith.

Remaining on his feet during the entire interview - "let's stand, just for the experience" - Christensen explains how his morally-torn Jedi Knight decides that giving into one's darker impulses is not a simple matter of becoming evil. He is proud that his portrayal of the emerging Vader gives some understanding of the type of person who would blow up a planet.

He is also pleased that the film's thematic allusions to the values of democracy, the rise of dictators and fighting oppression has such resonance in the world at the minute.

''I don't think the themes in Star Wars, especially the themes in Revenge of the Sith, could be any more relevant than they are right now. Anakin sells his soul to the devil to become Darth Vader, to be all-empowering, to be able to affect life the way he so desires. It's about a republic becoming an empire. It's very pertinent, very relevant stuff."

He hopes, however, that Sith won't win Vader any fans.

''I don't know that we're sympathetic (to Vader) per se, but we're absolutely enthralled and enraptured in that descent. George (Lucas) scripted it in such a clever way, and his relationship with Senator Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) is so well realised in this film that I would oftentimes, while acting opposite him, feel that the words coming out of my mouth were so incredible. I would break character and feel like that was really amazing."

The quality of Christensen's performance in Sith is certainly several rungs above what it was in Attack of the Clones. His portrayal seethes with a conviction and brooding menace we never sensed in Clones. Even his dialogue is better.

As brilliant as the visual-effect sequences were in Clones, Lucas did not exhibit comparable command over scenes involving two people talking to each other.

Not only was the dialogue often awful - Anakin's exchange with his dying mother easily qualifies as one of the worst in living memory - he appeared to have little idea how to direct actors, something that shows marked improvement in Sith.

Christensen is nothing if not gracious in the face of criticism, especially when fielding hard comments about the dramatic shortcomings in Clones.

''The dialogue in the Star Wars universe is so dissimilar to the way people talk in real life that it can be melodramatic and over-the-top and hard for people to buy into, but that is the universe that George has created and that is the creative freedom he has."

He even invokes the oft-quoted quip from Harrison Ford (aka Han Solo), who apparently said to Lucas during the shooting of the first Star Wars film in the mid-1970s that "you can write this shit, but you can't say it".

(This may be more legend than fact, but in 1994 Ford did say of author Tom Clancy about the film adaptation of Clear and Present Danger: "You do things when you're typing that you would never do if you had to f---ing stand there and deliver.")

Having said that, Christensen says Lucas seemed more involved and passionate on Sith.

"He was up from behind the monitors after every take, rushing over to the set saying, 'That was great guys, but can we do this?'" Ever since the revelation that Luke (Mark Hamill) and Leia (Carrie Fisher) are brother and sister in The Return of the Jedi (1983), the Star Wars films have become famous for their narrative anomalies, something the new trilogy has only exacerbated.

For instance, there is nothing in Episode III that explains why Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru don't recognise C-3PO and R2-D2 in Episode IV, having spent so much time with them in Episode II.

Taking the point with a laugh, Christensen embraces these wild inconsistencies as part of the charm the films hold for diehard fans.

''I wish I could say, 'Yes, there is (an explanation)'," he says, still chuckling, "but, you know, there are a few things (that don't add up). I mean, these films, they come from a man. People make mistakes, there are little flaws that people pick up on - that being one of them. In a lot of ways, that can be sort of fun for the fanatics to be able to pick at the film in such an intricate way."

With his work as the nascent Darth Vader now hard-wired into popular culture, Christensen feels "forever indebted to George Lucas.

He afforded me the most amazing opportunity in my life, and for that I'm forever grateful."

Nonetheless, Christensen has his own boat to row as an actor. He resolved before taking on the role in Clones that his Star Wars association would not forever define him.

Before being approached by Lucas, Christensen had already established himself as a film actor in Irwin Winkler's touching 2001 drama Life as a House and Sofia Coppola's The Virgin Suicides in 1999.

He is presently filming The Decameron in Italy and, in 2002, appeared on London's West End stage in This is Our Youth.

Between Clones and Sith, Christensen also starred in and helped produce Shattered Glass, an excellent true-life drama about Stephen Glass, the reporter for the prestigious New Republic magazine who became infamous for fabricating stories.

''You know, I don't really make choices to counteract any sort of public opinion (about me) or anything like that," he says. "I do work that excites me and that can challenge me as an actor.

That's really where the buck stops."

His portrayal of Glass as a whimpering, manipulative prick won Christensen many plaudits, though the life Glass now leads as a wealthy novelist has Christensen worried.

''It tells us a lot about celebrity culture, about the way people embrace celebrity, which has always been a bit of a weird phenomenon to me," he says candidly.

"I always thought that people who wanted to be famous had something a little wrong with them, you know? Who wants to be really well known and recognised, especially in the field of journalism, which is what really fuelled Stephen's ambition?

"The (current) nature of celebrity has encouraged people to take short cuts and to not really devote themselves to what the work is about. It's fame without merit, and reality TV promotes it even more."